Little Known Black Librarian Facts

June 24th, 2011 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

It gives me great pleasure to introduce a new library history blog. "Little Known Black Librarian Facts" is the creation of Michele T. Fenton and it is devoted to the history of African American Librarians and library services to African Americans. As noted in the introductory post to the blog: "Here you'll learn about the pioneers in the library profession, and the triumphs and struggles in making library services available to African Americans."  Michele is also the editor and compiler of the publication Little Known Black Librarian Facts, 2nd Edition (Indiana Black Librarians Network, 2011) which is available in digital form on the blog site. Welcome Michele to the very small group of library history bloggers.

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Indianapolis Public Library History

June 22nd, 2011 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

I'm a big fan of books that tell the story of a single library. I just obtained one of the best I've ever seen. It is Stacks: A History of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library by S. L. Berry with Mary Ellen Gadski (Indianapolis-Marion County Library Foundation, 2011).  A blurb on the cover states: "The Library has always been more than a source of information: it has been a center of community life. Stacks tells the story of the IMCPL's evolution, placing it in a national context and emphasizing its role in the educational and cultural life of Indianapolis". Berry and Gadski were commissioned by the IMCPL Foundation to write the book, and they have done a great job. As a former public library director, I liked the descriptions of the challenges faced by each of the directors of the library and how they responded to them. Noteworthy was the chapter titled "The McFadden Years, 1944-1956" which described how Marian McFadden dealt with the McCarthy era.  In addition to the quality writing I was highly impressed with the design of the book which according to a press release for the book was done by Jim and Jon Sholly.  The book includes numerous visual images. As a collector of librariana, I especially liked the images of bookplates on the front and end pages of the book. A neat idea was an illustration of a book pocket for the library with a date due slip that just happened to include significant dates in the history of the library. A double page montage in the book includes a number of examples of postcards showing two of the former central libraries. Shown above are postcards from my collection featuring the two buildings. The first building was completed in 1893 and the second in 1917. The book is available for $25 from the IMCPL Foundation. Strangely, the library's website includes little information about the history of the library or even about this great book.   

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ALA’s Handbook of Organization 1894

June 21st, 2011 by Larry T. Nix No comments »
Starting in 2009 the American Library Association's Handbook of Organization has only been available online. The information contained in the online handbook tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the organizational structure of one of the world's most complex library organizations. The online handbook is not a consolidated document but a connected grouping of website links which originate at a Table of Contents page. A far cry from today's electronic version of the ALA handbook is my copy of the 1894 version of the handbook shown here. It was de-accessioned from the ALA Library.   It is a handy 3 by 5 inch pocket size publication consisting 62 pages. Thirty of those pages list the entire membership of ALA at that time. Only five pages were needed to list the officers of ALA and the members of ALA's seven active committees. The list of members gives the date the member joined ALA and a registration number in order of the member's joining. Melvil Dewey joined in 1876 and was member number 1. Miss Ella Sites Wood, a library school student, joined in 1894 and was member number 1234. ALA's motto was on the front cover of the handbook: "The best reading, for the largest number, at the least cost".  The dues in 1894 were $2.00 per year, but if you weren't willing to pay that amount you could send your name to Melvil Dewey and get on his mailing list "interested in libraries" and receive printed matter about libraries and librarianship. I've completed 42 years of continuous membership in ALA and my registration number is 63888. It is also interesting to note that my last printed copy of ALA's Handbook of Organization included 226 pages of information.

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USF Book Club: The Lonely Polygamist

June 17th, 2011 by Kelci No comments »

Hello!

On July 20, 2011 the USF Book Club will meet to discuss The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. Gleeson’s copy is checked out right now, but we’ve got it loaded on our iPads and our Kindle. There’s always Link+ or SF Public until our copy comes in!

Come meet us in the seminar room, #209, of Gleeson Library from 12-1 pm. Bring your lunch and bring your friends! We don’t require you to have read the book to join the discussion. All members of the USF Community are welcome and no rsvp is necessary.

A family drama with stinging turns of dark comedy, the latest from Udall (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) is a superb performance and as comic as it is sublimely catastrophic. Golden Richards is a polygamist Mormon with four wives, 28 children, a struggling construction business, and a few secrets. He tells his wives that the brothel he’s building in Nevada is actually a senior center, and, more importantly, keeps hidden his burning infatuation with a woman he sees near the job site. Golden, perpetually on edge, has become increasingly isolated from his massive family-given the size of his brood, his solitude is heartbreaking-since the death of one of his children. Meanwhile, his newest and youngest wife, Trish, is wondering if there is more to life than the polygamist lifestyle, and one of his sons, Rusty, after getting the shaft on his birthday, hatches a revenge plot that will have dire consequences. With their world falling apart, will the family find a way to stay together? Udall’s polished storytelling and sterling cast of perfectly realized and flawed characters make this a serious contender for Great American Novel status. –Publisher’s Weekly

 


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George Washington’s Library

June 14th, 2011 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

On a recent trip to the Washington, D.C. area I took a tour of George Washington's home Mount Vernon. On the way out of the main house I was able to view the room where Washington kept his personal library of around 900 books (see postcard above). The books that are currently in the room were not owned by Washington. After his death his collection was passed on to relatives and eventually widely dispersed. A collection of 359 volumes was sold to London bookseller Henry Stevens in 1848. All but five of the Stevens purchase were passed on to the Boston Athenaeum where they remain. The story of Washington's library and its final disposition is contained in the book The Library at Mount Vernon by Frances Laverne Carroll and Mary Meacham (Beta Phi Mu, 1977). Up until 1978 the archives and papers of a president were considered to be the personal property of the president. As a result they were often dispersed and not maintained as a single collection as they are in today's presidential libraries administered by the National Archives. Fortunately many of the early collections of American presidents have been acquired by the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress owns the most comprehensive collection of  George Washington's papers.  A major new library is under construction at Mount Vernon which is intended to serve as "the international headquarters for knowledge about America’s most famous founding father".

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